The Coldest Night
by Red River
Summary: Winter in Xuancheng was always cold, but it was not always as cold as this. ZYxSC, one-shot. Nominally set within Secession's timeline.


A/N: I was a little down yesterday evening, and as a way of cheering myself up I decided to read a little of _Secession_, which is something I haven't done in a while since the urge to edit is eternally overwhelming. I hadn't expected Sun Ce's death to hit me with any real force, but it did, and gave me this persistent ache of sadness that I couldn't shake for a while.

To get rid of it, I decided to write a nameless moment in the course of Zhou Yu and Sun Ce's lives—this story is meant to take place sometime during the conquest of Wu, when they're about twenty-two. Just one of ten thousand similar moments I hope are implied in the course of _Secession_; please enjoy.

Pairing: Zhou Yu x Sun Ce

Warnings: None

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**The Coldest Night**

Winter was always cold in Xuancheng. The moon made it colder. The capital grounds did not need the light of that solemn disk of jade to leach their colors; the snow had done that much already, settling like a silencing hand over the roads so often paved with market chatter and the laughter of a city walking hand in hand with prosperity. Prosperity the snow could not take away, or hadn't yet – the sounds it could, and the night shared their burden, sleep and the season casting in equal measure their nets across the snow-encrusted roofs, pulling their occupants into dreams.

They had missed one. Zhou Yu stood at the edge of the stairs that led from the lip of the covered walkway, no warmer for the tiled roof slanting above it, to the gardens empty of all but the footsteps that the day had left imprisoned in the snow. Another year, a day without new snowfall would have robbed the fallen flakes of their severity; this year, the sun had forgotten how to show its face. Zhou Yu stared down into the midnight snow that might as easily have been two weeks old as two days. Winter was always cold in Xuancheng, but it was not always this cold.

Not that the cold seemed to bother most of the palace's occupants. Zhou Yu couldn't blame them for their fast sleep; he, too, had a warm bed waiting for him inside. Like some, he had a warm body waiting with it. It wasn't the cold that had woken him. The dark swordsman leaned back to look up at the cloudless sky, so open now that there was no sun worth the clarity, and his breath, as he exhaled, settled back over his face, hardened by the moonlight. Zhou Yu brushed his hair away from his eyes, the long strands as dark as the sky overhead getting caught in his mindless fingers.

It wasn't the cold. It was just the silence. Wu's famed strategist had always appreciated silence, all the more so as he got older and silence found its place in his life superseded by a constant progression of generals who needed orders and soldiers who needed rules and a young Sun lord who needed counsel, or at least a sound rap on the head. At first he had appreciated the absence of sound that the snow brought to Xuancheng, the way the entire city seemed to hold its breath as it waited for the excess of the last storm to fade away. Now, after a few days, Zhou Yu found it more unsettling than appealing. There was such a permanence to it, as though speech would never again be allowed to penetrate winter's last stronghold. As though the capital of the newborn Wu empire would surrender forever to silence.

"Hey."

Zhou Yu turned away from the gardens at the simple summons, finding in the shadows of the corridor at his back a face that did not need the moon to light its features. Sun Ce stepped forward and pulled his sleeping robe tighter around his shoulders, a match to the one that Zhou Yu wore, except that the Little Conqueror had neglected to don his slippers and his feet moved tenderly against the floor of the covered walkway, feeling out each step as though searching for the warmest patch of stone.

Sun Ce stepped into the cascade of the moonlight and smiled, his hair almost black under the solitary onslaught of white light. "This is rare for you, huh?" he asked, nudging Zhou Yu with an elbow far too used to the prodding to retain any force. Zhou Yu raised an eyebrow, the motion only sharpening the lines of amusement on his companion's face. "I'm used to you getting up to sneak back to work. Never had you sneak out to stargaze before, though."

Zhou Yu scoffed a little, though the sound held no malice. "I don't sneak, Ce. You simply sleep in the manner of a petrified log."

"Only when I'm trying."

Sun Ce's grin was a little too proud for the insult to have hit home; Zhou Yu resisted the urge to roll his eyes and leaned softly against the banister at the edge of the stairs – and though his gaze returned to the garden, his attention stayed on Sun Ce, on the hand that had reached for his and was drawing meaningless patterns into the skin of his palm with an absent fingernail.

"What're you looking at?"

Zhou Yu shook his head. "Nothing. I was just…" A shrug would have disturbed Sun Ce's hand around his, and there was no other gesture to put to it, so the swordsman remained still, only his eyes flickering across the grounds so long swallowed by the season. "Thinking."

Sun Ce scratched the back of his head, craning his neck around to catch his companion's gaze with eyes the moon had infiltrated perhaps too well. "And you couldn't think in bed, where it's warm?"

Zhou Yu shot him a look. "I didn't ask you to follow me."

Sun Ce laughed. It was the only sound in the world, and the world seemed to take a step back in surprise, the lilt of his amusement echoing too well over the white-shadowed grounds. The echoes made the sound seem unreal; the smile on the lord of Wu's lips was nothing if not genuine.

"Yeah, you never do," he said, leaning down to run his fingers through the snow that had collected on the top step. Zhou Yu watched the smooth alabaster giving way to the divots of his touch. Sun Ce shook his hand as though he immediately regretted the motion, and this time Zhou Yu did roll his eyes – no time of night nor intensity of season could seem to get in the way of Sun Ce acting before he thought things through.

"You never do," Sun Ce repeated, turning to face his companion and wiping wet and doubtlessly cold fingers against the fabric over Zhou Yu's chest. His hand stayed where the movement had left it, and his heartbeat was strong inside of it, strong enough that Zhou Yu could feel it through the lines of his robe. Sun Ce grinned. "Never stopped me before, though. Can't see any good reason to start now."

The red ribbon responsible for keeping the Little Conqueror's hair out of his face had fallen over his shoulder. Zhou Yu lifted a hand and chased it back where it belonged, completing the circle of their heartbeats as his hand rested against the young officer's neck.

"Not even for the sake of getting some sleep?"

Sun Ce was so warm when he smiled. The expression was so familiar on his face that Zhou Yu almost could not picture him without it, and yet that never stopped the wave of summer warmth he felt rolling over him when that countenance was turned his way. The Sun lord's hand dropped to his and the cold air of Xuancheng's late night slipped out from between his strategist's fingers, overpowered, as all things were, by the brilliance and the persuasion of that August smile.

"How about we both get some sleep? It's a lot warmer inside, I promise."

Sun Ce's steps had lost their hesitation, and Zhou Yu did not hesitate to follow them, keeping his eyes on his companion's as they slipped out of the moonlight and into the shadow once again. In the darkness that tan face lost its indomitable smile, but Zhou Yu could see it all the same – there was no darkness anymore that could take it away from him. The young officer tipped his head to the side and chuckled.

"Besides, my feet are killing me. I think I'm gonna have frostbite just from walking out here."

"Next time, wear your shoes," his strategist muttered, not the most brilliant but possibly the most practical tactical advice he had lately given his sovereign. Sun Ce waved a careless hand.

"Yeah, yeah – sure. How about next time you don't pick the coldest night of the year to sneak out for a walk, huh?"

Sun Ce turned away from him and slipped inside the doors to the eastern wing, and Zhou Yu shook his head and followed him, pausing only in the doorway itself for a backwards glance at the ivory city that had lost its silence, as all things did, to an unstoppable laugh and an unstoppable smile, and two amber eyes shining in the darkness. Then he followed his companion down the sleeping hall and into their quarters, keeping his assertion to himself – that it was not the coldest night of the year, and wouldn't be, so long as Sun Ce's hand was in his.


End file.
